Oilfield scale deposition is a serious challenge facing the oil and gas industry. Among the available techniques to prevent formation of scale deposition, squeeze treatment is one of the most efficient and common techniques. Squeeze treatments consists of the injection of chemical scale inhibitor followed by an overflush stage. The chemical will prevent scale deposition if the concentration of inhibitor in the produced brine is above a certain concentration level, known as the Minimum Inhibitor Concentration (MIC).

The main purpose of this paper is to present squeeze treatments designs for a field case with a specified target lifetime. The methodology presented in this paper includes an optimisation algorithm suitable for this complex real life problem. The algorithm, which is described, presents a number of optimum designs, from amongst which the Pareto optimal front is calculated to identify the most efficient design for the particular conditions of the well under risk of scale deposition.

Introduction

The deposition of organic and inorganic material in surface facilities, wellbore and near wellbore areas may lead to a number of serious problems. Scale deposition in the near wellbore area may cause blockage in the perforations or the near-well formation that leads to a reduction in well inflow performance. Deposition in the tubing or the surface facilities leads to significant flow restriction problems, see Figure 1. In addition, other important problems caused by scale deposition are subsurface safety valve failure, choke failure, and pump wear (Zavala et al., 2008; Vazquez et al., 2016).

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